A/N: All characters and places belong to J.K. Rowling and affiliates. Only the plot line and OC's belong to me.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, 1941
Augusta Jane Longbottom knew something was wrong when she came back to the Fifth Year's dormitory in the Gryffindor Tower and found that Minerva McGonagall was still asleep.
Secretly, Augusta was always jealous of Minerva, though she reasoned it was all right because everyone wanted to be Minerva, except for maybe Minerva herself.
Minerva was a rare beauty. With pale and creamy Celtic skin and dark ringlets of hair, high cheek bones and thin lips, she was always perfectly put together and breathtaking. She was small in stature, barely reaching five feet and ninety pounds, something tall and lanky Augusta was unhappy about. But the most stunning part of Minerva was her eyes. They captivated her face like bright brilliant emeralds. Inside the irises were there almost unnoticeable gold flecks that sparkled in the right light, taking over the green.
The second thing that made Augusta nervous was that when she shut the door loudly and threw herself down on her own four poster bed, Minerva didn't awaken. Ever since their first year at Hogwarts, Minerva had been an incredibly light sleeper. A gust of wind or a rustle of parchment would send her spiraling.
"Minerva, love, it's eleven o'clock," she said cheerily, kicking off her shoes. This morning when Minerva hadn't gotten up at the crack of dawn, her closest friend, save maybe Tom Riddle, Poppy Pomfrey had shrugged it off and told the other girls to let her sleep. They had all gone off to Hogsmeade and left her to catch up on well-deserved rest.
Minerva didn't stir.
Augusta frowned and left her Honeydukes and Zonko's bags on her bed and slipped off the bed. She moved towards Minerva's bed, the last one in the back of the room nearest the window.
Minerva's side of the room was always neat. On her nightstand were a thick leather notebook and a set of master level Transfiguration textbooks. A goblet sat near the lamp with an empty potions bottle.
Her trunk sat at the bottom of her bed with her school bag sitting on top. "Minerva? Minerva, it's time to get up or you're going to miss lunch."
She looked to be asleep. Her hair was braided away from her face and her eyelids seemed to quiver like she was sleeping. There was something wrong.
The door slammed again and Poppy Pomfrey waltzed in. "Good morning, Minerva! Are you still asleep?" She trailed off and came over to Augusta. "She's not awake yet?"
"I think there's something wrong. Minerva shouldn't be asleep this long…"
Poppy Pomfrey had wanted to be a healer since she was a little tiny First Year. She had studied with Madam Lenus in the hospital wing for the last two years and set about trying to wake Minerva.
There really wasn't anything to be amiss. She was simply in a deep, deep sleep, but that in itself was disturbing to Poppy. Minerva could never sleep for more than a few hours at a time. This wasn't good.
"There's something wrong. I'm going to get Professor Dumbledore. Stay here and keep trying to wake her up."
Poppy leapt down from the bed and ran towards the door. She knew Professor Dumbledore would know what to do. As their Head of House, Dumbledore seemed to be the wisest of the staff. He and Minerva were closer than close. She was his only apprentice. Poppy simply liked him because he wasn't as scary or obnoxious of the other teachers.
She reached his Office in record time and began to quickly knock on the door. It was only a few seconds before the door swung open to reveal Dumbledore grading papers behind his desk.
"Ah, Miss Pomfrey, to what do I owe the pleasure this fine Saturday?"
"Sir…there-pant-something wrong with-pant-Minerva!" she managed to gasp out. "She just won't-pant-wake up!"
Dumbledore rose immediately without question and followed her quickly back to the common room and up the steps to the girl's dormitory. "Tell me what happened, Miss Pomfrey," Dumbledore implored as they moved towards Minerva's form in the bed.
"Well when I got up this morning Minerva was still sleeping so I thought I'd let get catch up on some sleep. She normally doesn't rest well and she's a bit stressed out with exams, so we left for Hogsmeade and when get got back she was just like this. She won't wake up and Minerva's a terribly light sleeper."
Dumbledore moved in towards Minerva. Augusta scrambled away and stood next to Poppy. "Minerva?" Dumbledore called to her calmly, moving across to the other side of the bed. "Minerva?" he called a little louder, shaking her slightly.
Minerva remained limp. Poppy noticed Dumbledore's face paling.
"MINERVA!"
No response.
Dumbledore turned around rapidly, shifting through the stuff on her bed and on the nightstand. He paused when he found the goblet on the nightstand.
He moved over to grab the vial and the goblet, inhaling it deeply. He moved around what seemed to be a very simple sleeping draught. Minerva took those often.
"Sir, what is that?"
Dumbledore snapped over to where Poppy was pointing. While trying to wake her, Minerva's shirt had risen up past her belly button. A dark rash seemed to be creeping up her abdomen. It was curvy and intricate, almost like a tattoo.
Professor Dumbledore swore very quietly under his breath. "Something is very wrong. Miss Pomfrey, if you would grab that vial and goblet please." Albus gently gathered Minerva into his arms and turned to Augusta. "Would you mind staying here Miss Longbottom and keeping tabs on the Common Room in our absence. Don't tell anyone anything until I know more."
It struck Augusta then that something very serious was happening. It hadn't crossed her mind that Minerva might die. That was such a ludicrous thought—Minerva McGonagall dying. Not that beautiful and immeasurably powerful and talent Minerva. Her tongue grew heavy in her mouth.
"Sir, she's going to be okay right?"
Albus Dumbledore paused in the doorway. "She's not going to die Miss Longbottom, not if I can help it." And with that, he disappeared with Minerva held close to his chest.
They made it to the Hospital Wing in record time. Dumbledore gently deposited Minerva on the bed nearest to the Office and called out, "JANE!"
There was a bustling and shuffling of papers. "Well I dare say, Albus, there's no reason to be sho-" Whatever her reply was, she didn't finish as she rushed to Minerva's side.
Her breath was hitched. "Albus … what is this?"
"Some sort of poison, I expect," he said gravely. "I'm afraid I'm befuddled as to what it is. Judging by the marks I can say with certainty that it's fast acting, exceedingly strong, and … quite possibly lethal."
Poppy gasped, almost dropping the goblet. "You mean she's going to die?"
"There's no need to jump to conclusion, Miss Pomfrey," the Healer said quietly. Dumbledore drew close to the raven haired girl's bedside, feeling his heart contract painfully in his chest.
If the feeling frightened him, he didn't let on. It was ludicrous of course. She was a child. Simply a student, nothing less. A special student to him, of course, but nothing more. Or so he could keep telling himself.
"She's not allowed to die," Dumbledore said immediately. He gently brushed tendrils of obsidian hair out of her face and took her cold, limp hand.
"Not while I'm still breathing."
Nurmengard Castle, 1945
When the final Battle of the Great War was finished, Minerva McGongall looked around to see the battlefield of Nurmengard littered with bodies like a bomb had exploded and she was vaguely afraid to be one of the ones who had survived the horror.
She jumped and turned, wand high in the air and a curse on her tongue, when a hand touched her shoulder, only to find her commanding officer, the scarred and slightly mad Alastor Moody behind her.
"Easy there, lass," he said gently.
The old war hero looked even more in his element, covered in blood and open wounds than he did in the office behind desks and paperwork. That fact in itself frightened Minerva.
"We need to check for survivors. It's just us and half of Vest's team on the Southern end. It'll be a while before medics and the press show up. Then the circus will start."
"Everyone else is dead?" Her tone betrayed her shock and her youth. A flash of compassion glinted in Moody's eyes.
"Look at me, lass, I need you to focus for me. That's the reason I brought you with me. Because you're good. Damn good. Without you, we couldn't have made it through the barricades and this war would still be going on. But it's not over yet."
She nodded and swallowed. Finding her Gryffindor courage, she moved through the rubble towards the inside of the building. The main room where Grindelwald had fallen. Bricks and stone, dust and wood smear on the ground, mixing with the blood of the fallen.
Minerva ignored it and forced her aching feet to keep walking. Everything seemed so quiet after the screams of battle that had lasted for the last few hours.
When she reached the room, she spotted the Dark Lord's body immediately, fallen just near his throne. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the word irony surfaced.
Stifling her disgust, she checked the pulse on the bloody man and felt no heartbeat. Her eyes averted looking directly at his face. She had seen him before, she had even seen the man during the battle, but looking at him now, in death, seemed a waste.
Minerva moved away from his Grindelwald's corpse and caught sight of an auburn beard.
"Professor!"
The body moved.
Relief flooded her as she rushed to his side. Kneeling next to him, she immediately took stock of his bloody, ripped robes, his cut chin, broken wand, and tangled beard.
His eyes were shut. "Merlin, Professor, can you hear me?"
It was a few second before his eyes opened and he spoke.
"Little girls shouldn't be around so many dead bodies," Albus said thickly, blinking up at her.
Minerva smiled watery and laughed, forcing back the tears that threatened her eyes.
"I'm not a little girl anymore, sir."
"Nineteen is little," he whispered his voice cracking. "Is…is he dead?"
Bruises covered his body, developing even under all the blood that covered his body. Minerva could only cast so many generic healing spells. He needed a hospital and a good one at that. Fear trickled into the pit of Minerva stomach.
"He's dead," she whispered soothingly. "I checked him myself. It's over. It's all over."
Dumbledore managed to nod jerkily and his head relaxed back to the ground. "Good," he whispered.
"The Healers are on their way," she said quickly, glancing over her shoulders, but she knew no one was coming. Everyone else, but a few were dead. "Just try to keep still a little longer."
Dumbledore suddenly grabbed her wrist, startling her. His long, calloused fingers laced her thin, nimble ones. A supple warmth settled into her palm. His electric blue eyes melted into her brilliant green ones.
"You'll stay?" he managed to choke out, blue eyes imploring.
She nodded immediately, squeezing his hand, heart contracting painfully in her chest, as he took each agonizing breath. A single tear dribbled down her cheek. She didn't bother brushing it away.
"Always."
St. Mungo's Hospital 1996
Many, many years later, Albus Dumbledore sat waiting in disguise. He had always hated cloaking and deception spells, but when the Ministry had a price on your head, certain measures had to be taken. He especially missed his beard, which would, of course, be a dead giveaway of who he was.
"Who ye waitin' on?"
Albus looked up to see a ragged looking man one seat over from him. His brown robes were frayed and he looked as if he hadn't shaved in a week. He smelled of old alcohol and unwashed clothes, a distinct contrast to the hospital air of St. Mungo's.
"My wife," Albus said honestly, surprising himself with his answer.
The man pursed his lips and nodded, dejectedly jerking back a sip from his flask. He held it out to offer Albus some, but he politely refused.
"I was ter, waitin' fer my wife. 'til she kicked the bucket that tis."
A pang of pity hit Albus' heart. He extended his hand. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said genuinely. The man shook it half-heartedly. "Not surprisin' though, she always did like ter take little pieces of me."
Albus was unsure how to respond to this and the man took another large sip of booze, leaning farther back in the uncomfortable plastic chairs that lined the Extensive Spell Damage Hall.
"Suppose that it, idn't it? Love, the poison of the soul. Sucks ye in til you can't live without 'er and then she leaves yeh alone to suffer."
The two blue double doors opened, startling the two men and a masked Healer came outside. "Mister la Fleur? Your wife is out of surgery. Come this way please."
Albus quickly rose up from the chair and grabbed his way coat. Before moving through, he turned back to the man.
"Perhaps it's a poison in this hour for you, but some have dual purposes. They counteract defects in the heart, in the bones, can fix spell damage, and even eat at diseases. Sometimes love is the only thing that can save you as well as destroy you. Good luck, good sir."
The man grunted a response Albus' couldn't quite make out.
He followed the healers back until they were all too easy to escape from. He had to find Minerva.
Severus had managed to get word to him about the attack minutes after it had occurred and he had made it there by the time she was in surgery, but it was simply too risky for him to get into the operation room to see her while the Healers were working.
Her room was sectioned off from the rest and sealed off with enough spell to keep out any normal intruder, save one like Albus Dumbledore.
He took off the invisibility spell as he closed the door, making Poppy Pomfrey jump back in fright.
"Merlin's beard!"
He would have smiled, but he didn't, couldn't.
"I should have known you'd be here, Albus," Poppy said with a quiet chuckle after she had recomposed herself. "They said she flew through surgery with fly colors. They hope she'll awaken soon."
"What the hell happened?"
At the question, he looked up to find Severus Snape brooding quiet, but protectively in the corner. He stepped forward, more into the light and put a calloused hand on the bed rails.
"Umbridge allowed Aurors to go after Hagrid. There were eight of them. She just went out there to ask them what was going on and on that—" the Potion Master seemed to struggle for words "—that woman's order's they fired on her. She blocked the first four stunners wandlessly from what I saw, but the other four came from behind, struck her right in the chest. We got to her as fast as we could, Albus. We've been with her since."
Dumbledore nodded, satisfied and sat down on edge of his wife's bed. She looked peaceful, or as peaceful as Minerva allowed herself to be. Her long dark hair was loosely plaited away from her face in a braid that he suspected was Poppy's doing.
Her eyes were motionless underneath her paper-thin eyelids and he couldn't help was remember the similar image of her fifteen-year-old self in this similar position, dying by a lethal poison as he held her hand, only saved by their illegal, unregistered Animagi training.
He could hear her heartbeat on the monitor just above them and dozens of wires were connected in and out of the blankets around her onto the machines behind her.
"Will she be all right?" he looked up beseechingly as Poppy. The Medi-Witch looked exhausted as she sat in the chair across from Minerva's bed, reading the surgeon's notes.
"All the stunners missed the heart, some of them narrowly. She's be in rough shape for a while, but her magic will heal her body more quickly than medicine ever would be able to. The main thing is to get her to slow down and rest," the Hogwarts healer said.
"What about the students, the rest of the staff?"
"All fine. Pomona is looking over Minerva's house and Filius mine. We had to placate many of Minerva's upper-level Gryffindors from attacking certain Aurors and getting arrested during their exams, but they seemed to have just settled. Everyone's just waiting for her to wake up."
Albus swallowed once and squeezed Minerva's hand gently. Her nimble pale fingers were just the same as the ones she had as a student, quick and slender, beautiful and porcelain.
"Minerva, dear heart, can you hear me?"
"She might not wake up for some time, Albus, the healers weren't sure they got all the damage…" Poppy said gently. He knew she was just trying to prepare him for the coming hours, but it was already beginning to agitate him. The only thing he was to be alone with his beloved wife.
Albus began to talk, telling her all the news and gossips, the things he knew would make her smile and the things that would make her lips thin and her nose flared. "…and the man responded, "Aye, that Madame Umbridge runs that horse farm up yonder right, I tell yeh that woman-"
"Madame Toad."
Seconds later, papery eyelids flickered to reveal brilliant green orbs and everyone, Snape included, sighed in relief.
"Madame Toad?"
"Mmhmm," the Transfiguration Mistress said tiredly, eyes flickering back shut. "That's what I told the students they could address her as."
Albus raised an eyebrow and chuckled. "You told the students that they could address the Headmistress as Madame Toad, you Professor McGonagall, Strict Enforcer of all School Rules?"
"Hush you," she growled playfully, eyes flickering back open. "I had to do something that didn't involve poisoning the woman. It's a miracle she's still alive. If you wanted her well treated then you shouldn't have gotten kicked out and left the mess for me to deal with," she said with a smirk.
Albus laughed. "Oh, my dear, I have missed you."